Yesterday the Pokémon twitter account announced a Pokemon Direct livestream for today (February 27th) which would contain some news.

The direct has confirmed what many of us speculated: generation 8. Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield will be set in the entirely new Galar Region

Galar appears to be based on the United Kingdom. On of the coolest minor details being the hill figure which seems to be based on the U.K.’s “Cerne Abbas Giant”.

As with any new Pokémon game there will be new starters: Grookey, a grass type Chimp. Scorbunny, a fire type rabbit. and Sobble, a water type lizard.

This will be the first main series RPG Pokémon game for the Nintendo Switch, and seems to have even better graphics than last year’s Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu and Let’s Go Eevee. The battle animations have been consistently getting better and better, but here the environments may the the biggest triumph.

Gyms are also making a return after the trials system from Generation 7’s Sun, Moon, Ultra Sun, and Ultra Moon. The trials served as a good experiment, but it is good to be back to basics. One feature many fans hoped to see return in Generation 7 was player customization, this does not appear to have been carried over however that could be subject to change.

No news on the legendaries for this region, though curiously the mascot Pokémon on the game covers seem to be the same Pokémon. Some sort of wolf like creature. As someone who adores Early Modern and Victorian era myths and urban legends I cannot wait to see how they adapt many of these creatures. Perhaps the legendaries are based on Werewolfs or Beast of Gévaudan. Kalos was based on France, but did not adapt that famous mystery.

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